


Tethers and Anchors

by orientinme



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Abigail becomes their surrogate daughter, FlintHamilton, M/M, Thomas is alive, Thomas is in Savannah, Treasure Island Fix-It, While they buy a farm in Georgia, is heavily implied, silverflint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-26 22:36:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9926381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orientinme/pseuds/orientinme
Summary: "John’s parting gift had also been a story. The story of how Captain Flint had died a drunk in Savannah, after the war and the death, and a carnage too many. Silver had given him with his words what, in ten years of fighting, he had never managed to achieve for himself."James finds Thomas in Savannah.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is what 4x04 did to me and I really, really wanted to write this before the writers snatch away all the hope they got me. Credit where it's due: Ongi is the one who told me that having a surrogate daughter naimed Abigail could become a pattern for our favorite ships ;) 
> 
> Ongi: à ce niveau-là, je vais arrêter de te créditer en relecture, je vais juste dire que t'es ma muse. Amour.

_**i. places i’ll go** _

 

He found the girl hauled up in an apartment furnished all in all with a bed and a desk, as he was told she would be; obviously, Max had done her homework.

He had wondered, after Charles Town, what had become of Abigail Ashe. She had seemed fragile and innocent, maybe too naive, but she had looked at Miranda with admiration and that meant something to him.

She did not do so much as blink at the sight of him, though she must have known by now that he had destroyed a city and killed her father. A maid was at her side – maybe another prisoner? In doubt, he raised his pistol and waived it in their general direction until the other woman stood up and ran, shrieking, and he was left with frail, little Abigail Ashe.

He moved to sit on the bed. Max was supposed to have done her best to have word sent here for the girl to be prepared for his arrival, but nothing was certain, and he had left in too much of a hurry, in the middle of too much of a mess, to wait and make sure things had gone according to plan.

“I knew I’d see you again.” She said, her pen still in hand.

“That makes one of us, then.”

She closed what he assumed to be her diary and looked expectantly at him. No more naivete then.

“You’re here for Thomas Hamilton, aren’t you?”

 

 

_**ii. shadows** _

 

James knew he was surviving on the last sparks of his rage. He knew they were fading, gradually turning to ashes the longer he went without feeding them. But he had made the conscious decision to give them nothing to feed of anymore – those times were over. He had gone home and all that was left to do was kill the suitors and the maids.

Savannah was heavy with the scent of its port. The air was relatively cold, though, because cities up there still managed to have something of a proper winter (nothing even close to what London’s chill could be – but still).

Abigail did not talk much. He had enquired as to whether she needed anything, now that she was free and before he started asking her about what he needed to know – put in the care of the same man who had also kept Thomas prisoner for so long, she was invaluable to him at the moment. Her answer was a stern look that surprised him.

“I want to not be a prisoner anymore.”

They were sitting at the table of the inn he’d booked once he had arrived. The owner was not one of Max’s spies, meaning as far away as it could get to having business with pirates, as they had agreed would be best.

He immediately began to form words to try and reassure Abigail – for so long, he had made himself believe he was a seeker of utopia he now needed to remind himself time and time again that it was just a convenient tale, a baseless assumption he had repeated himself to feel better about who he had become.

So instead of spinning words around to convince her she was free _but_ that her choice should be to stay with him – the words were already on the tip of his tongue, ready to dart and work their seamless magic – he said:

“We’ll find a way out of here, once I’ve freed Thomas. I’ll have you taken wherever you want. After this is all over.”

She nodded but her head was looking outwards, towards the relentless agitation of the street outside, and shadows were marring her features as night had quickly fallen and candles had just been lit around the tavern. He doubted anyone would come and look for her in a place like _that_. And even then – let them come. He sometimes forgot there was nothing on this continent that was a match for him.

“I learned about Mrs. Hamilton. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“I killed your father for that.” He answered right away.

He knew that was him running ahead of himself – the times where he could ask for redemption had not come yet. The fight was still not over – not his fight, at least.

“I know.” Was all she said, in the end.

 

 

_**iii. headshots** _

 

It took them thirty-two hours to find where Thomas was kept and for James to devise a plan.

 

He began by killing in the blink of an eye the mercenaries guarding the front door, the entrance of the corridor as well as the place itself. Inside, one other man was with Thomas but he stood no chance against James’ swift and merciless shot at his head.

Thomas looked paler than James remembered. His eyes were puffy, his hair patched with grey behind his temples and he harboured the shadow of a beard when he found him, reading a book by the window of what they’d called a study and which James called a cell.

The moment was uncomfortable – Thomas did not move, jaw-slacked for a moment, and James could do nothing, say nothing, for too many feelings, words, and thoughts were weighing on him at that moment. It was Thomas who regained his senses first, standing up so abruptly, his chair fell with a loud _thud_ on the floor.

“More will come once they hear the shots.” Thomas said, eyes alert, following the line of James’ arm to his pistol.

James could only nod and retreated until he was back in the hallway, not once letting Thomas out of his sight. A lump formed in his throat when he saw that Thomas was limping but he restrained his instinctive desire to grip his arm. He had already told himself that he would not allow for any time-wasting display of emotion until he could guarantee both their safeties.

They made their way out the building and into the street too slowly for James’ taste but soon enough that they encountered almost no resistance (another headshot was enough to disperse three more men of which the two still standing quickly took their cue and turned around running out of his pistols’ reach).

A carriage was waiting for them in the street, deserted after the sound of shots that must have been heard all the way down the boulevard. Abigail was reining the horses in and looking expectantly at Thomas, but she said nothing as James opened the door and stopped himself from trying to help Thomas climb the single step it took to get inside. His arm ached from the restraint and he did his best to close the door without breaking it before climbing in the front, by Abigail’s side.

“You should be inside.” He told her.

She barely gratified him with a glance before giving some rope to the horses. The carriage started moving quietly. Even though James would have wanted it thrown into gallop, they had agreed beforehand that quietness would be the less conspicuous way to got about it.

(They had also agreed that he’d stay inside the carriage with Thomas.)

They went through Main Road without incident, blending again with the ongoing animations and quite certain that no one had followed – once again, he would think about thanking Max for the reliability of the information she’d managed to gather if he thought he’d ever see her again.

He turned around to speak through the opening in front of the carriage and told Thomas:

“We’re almost out of town. Is everything alright for you?”

It felt as peculiar as it sounded and maybe that was why Thomas laughed.

“It’s never been better.” He choked a little near the end of the sentence and James’ lips twinged in something resembling a smile.

Once they were really out of town, Abigail stopped the carriage and stared him down until he finally shrugged and started moving.

That last step – closing the door of the carriage as Abigail made the horses resume the journey – felt as the liberation it truly was.

 

 

_**iv. places i’ve been** _

 

They each had a story with them that they needed the other to hear. Thomas’ story was less eventful, less dazzling, but no less intricate that James’. But Thomas seemed reluctant to share it and so it fell upon James to try and sort out the thousands of memories that made up a life that seemed alien to him, even though it had still been his up to three weeks ago.

 

He chose to begin with the pain.

 

 

 

_**I. THE STORIES WE TELL** _

 

Upon learning of Thomas’ death, James had thought that he could bear no longer – and yet, he had endured it, and there he was, still standing, still fighting, so many years later.

It was true that back then Miranda had still been by his side, his ever-devoted, ever-present anchor, the barrage against his desolation, even after everything he’d put her through. She had been his only tether to McGraw for so long – how ironic, given everything James McGraw could have ever been had started dying the moment he had met the Hamiltons.

 

[ _renowned Navy sergeant, protégé of Hennessey, set for a formidable course in life, the exceptionally gifted low-life that rose high, higher than anticipated, riding the coattails of dreams that were meant for people that were not like him, not like his parents, and his -]_

 

But even she had been incapable of turning the tide, of stopping his desolation and helplessness (and love) from turning into the inextinguishable anger that had ridden him for the last ten years. He had fed off of it after it had turned white-hot in Charles Town, he had made that anger his companion and every blow stuck against his armour had simply added another layer of rock-hard fire to it.

 

[ _he’d killed those he loved, those he knew, he’d killed and killed and slaughtered, men, women, and children, and with every blow struck and every shot fired there had been this voice nagging at the back of his head that killing the killers still did not make him the hero; that exerting rightful vengeance was not -]_

 

Until the sacrifices became too much. Until life discharged him of leadership – until the after-effects of Miranda’s death had finished rippling, and had instead started sinking into his heart. Until one treason too much sent him back to where he knew he belonged: his inner demons.

 

 

_**II. BLACK SPOTS** _

  
He had thought he was witnessing his own story – the story of a kid from nowhere becoming someone through sheer power of will, through words and words-crafting (and even lies – but those are only elaborate stories, aren’t they?).

He had thought that Silver’s story was his, albeit narrated in a slightly different variation. John had been weirdly inept at everything James would have wanted him to be – until he suddenly wasn’t. He had mastered smiles and feelings and had drawn so much devotion from the men so quickly, so unexpectedly, it had left James aghast, wondering if he could claim some of what he was seeing as his, too.

 

[ _And because he had thought that this was his story, he_ _had_ _assumed that the time would come, one day, when he would have to step in the narrative as John’s Thomas – how stupid he’d been, fooling himself in believing that this was still his story, that this was still about Captain Flint, about his wants and desires and dreams -_ ]

 

Miranda would have told him, she would have known to warn him, she would have known that seeing too much of yourself in others was a mistake; a mirage at best, an open invitation for betrayal at worst. Teach, too, could have told him that loving those we think we have made in our image is the surest path to digging our grave (he had known that truth, above all others).

James knew he could not possibly be the man who fell in love with the brilliance of Thomas’ mind while also being a man who could remain stoic watching the evolution of John Silver.

And how carefully he had watched... The story was too good for him to even think about being jealous at the thought that Silver was becoming the new King – in lieu of Teach, in lieu of him. Because this was how it was always supposed to be – this was the only story worth telling. Billy had known that. He had seen it all before James could envision it.

He’d seen the story with clarity, without the heavy burden of personal feelings clouding his judgement and he’d made it reality – like a proper storyteller had to.

 

[ _I tried, he tells Thomas, I tried so hard, for everything…? I forgot the betrayals. I forgave even when I did not what it meant to forgive. I wish there was more to this life than just this pain, than waiting to bury those you know, those you love, those who -_ ]

 

John’s parting gift had also been a story. The story of how Captain Flint had died a drunk in Savannah, after the war and the death, and a carnage too many. Silver had given him with his words what, in ten years of fighting, he had never managed to achieve for himself.

 

Freedom from James Flint.

 

 

 

 

 

_**v. You can’t see it can you** _

 

_[he asks Thomas: I love you? And Thomas says: no man is an island.]_

 

 

 

 

 

 

_**vi. i heard you** _

 

They settled in a farm in southern Georgia. James would have liked to go elsewhere, to a place where slavery was not the baseline assumption upon which the entire social fabric was built, but they did not have much of a choice.

The place they found, too, he owed it to Max. He knew she had done all this to have him disappear, but a part of him also knew she had done it for Eleanor and for the fact that they had cared for the same thing, even if it had been in different ways.

 

[ _Eleanor was dead. It made sense, in a twisted kind of way. The world had no place left for her outside of Nassau – and Nassau was never again going to be hers (if it had ever been in the first place)._ ]

 

The farm was barely more than a few miserable acres but no one complained.

Abigail, to James’ surprise, required nothing and asked for even less. After they had freed Thomas, he had offered her a way out, telling her he could book her passage on a ship if she wished to go back to her relatives in London. Instead, she had asked to stay with them for a while longer and she became the one taking care of the day to day activities that were required of a household for it to function.

Thomas still did not talk much, seemingly content to simply open the door, walk a few steps on the veranda, and go back inside, just because he could. James never made any comment. Sometimes, Abigail would do the same thing, but preferred to take long walks from which she only came back after nightfall, to James and Thomas’ gradual disarray and worry.

 

_**vii. this feels like living** _

 

It was overwhelming, to find out, day after day, that they could still talk, and share, and never be tired of the other’s thoughts. It was not perfect, far from it, for there was not a single thing they said that did not conjure the ghost of Miranda between them, heavy and otherworldly and a remnant of what they could never leave behind.

But pain had been a fixture of James’ life for so long, he was fine with it lingering for a little while longer, for he knew how to deal with it now. And Thomas seemed to have learned that too.

 

James was conscious, every moment of the day, every moment he spent around the farm, every moment he spent working in the fields, that he ought to resist the temptation to start looking in Thomas for the missing pieces of himself. And that part, too, they talked about, for none of them had forgotten that there was nothing they could not deal with when they were of the same mind.

 

Thomas felt foreign – he felt like comfort and satin, but James knew that was simply his mind conjuring the long gone memories of eleven years ago. Now, Thomas’ hands were calloused and he did not take regular care of his beard.

James could hear Thomas strained breathing as he turned over and laid with his cheek resting on a pillow. He could picture Thomas moving by the way the mattress shifted and felt him gripping his hips to steady himself and straddle him. He still did not have an explanation for the limp and had refrained so far from asking. Thomas was getting better by the day, and that was all that mattered.

His thoughts were cut short by Thomas’ fingers parting him and it was his turn to have his breath catch in his throat.

 

_**viii. (where) you and i stand** _

 

Because it felt so right, so much, to be there, his ghosts’ attacks blindsided him more often than not.

 

Thomas and Abigail were sitting on the veranda. They had met before he found them both, but Abigail did not talk about it, and neither did Thomas, so James did not ask about that either. They were talking agitatedly about philosophy. It was almost noon, and they would soon all get hauled up inside the house trying to escape the heat, but for now the sun tolerated them.

With James, Thomas exchanged thoughts – with Abigail, he gave classes. Both suited him.

James was only listening with one ear when suddenly Thomas said:

“Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!”

Abigail laughed:

“That seems oddly applicable to what we have been through.”

But James did not hear her.

He was almost doubled down on the kitchen table, where he’d been peeling himself an apple. They were laughing on the veranda, resuming their conversation, but he was back on an island, and Madi was barefoot on the sand, her hair coiffed so as to not give away that she was most definitely not a slave and a spark in her eye as she left him speechless by quoting Don Quixote.

And Madi brought with her another ghost, one whose memory accompanied his every step, one he always had to allude to when Thomas asked him about his scars, for he was linked to all of them.

-

After they were both spent, that night, and Thomas’ hand was on James’ neck, gently stroking, James felt it again. That overwhelming feeling that took him by surprise and did not leave him enough time to regain his sense.

So he said:

"I almost loved someone.”

And Thomas could only smile then, understanding, comforting, knowing. He already knew, of course. They had been talking for so long, so much. He kissed away the tears and the misunderstandings nonetheless. Thomas could understand that feelings are not exclusive. That the pain was not in having loved someone during those ten years, but that, precisely, James had refused to do so, even when there had been someone, so close, to whom he could have chosen to give his affection.

“He seems worthy of that.”

And because James considered this too much of a dangerous route to take he corrected:

“He was.”

Thomas cupped his cheek, bringing his face to his, and kissed him for a long and quiet moment.

“You don’t have to forget about them. We don’t have to forget about the past to make this worthwhile.”

And because this was the first time since they had been here that Thomas alluded to the farm as to a place they could stay for a long time, James’ worries ebbed away, in favour of the pleasurable pool of warmth that settled in his chest every time he could look at his future and see it shared with Thomas.

 

_**iv. it would seem these men fear their own monsters** _

 

Abigail was the only one who ever went to the nearest post office – a day’s carriage away – to bring back what they needed for the house, the fields, or anything else. James had been wary of that liberty being given to her – too often, the thought that he had killed her father and should be ready to see her strike him back to claim revenge nagged at him. But Thomas hadn’t let him decide on the matter.

And so, with every passing day, James’ fears assuaged, but they never really left him.

-

When Abigail, after coming back from one of her trips, came and sought him out in the veranda when Thomas was not around, he found it unsettling, at best. She was empty-handed and had that air he easily recognized on her face – the one she had when he told her that he’d killed her father, the one she used any time they veered too close to talking about her time in Nassau whilst in front of Thomas.

They stared at each other for a while, and he said nothing, resting on his shovel, for it was obvious she was searching for her words.

“They say that Nassau has been taken again by the British.”

That was hardly news to him, but he just nodded.

“They say that Captain Flint is in exile, getting intoxicated on rum, somewhere in Savannah.”

“Even legends die.” He snorted, fidgeting with the shovel, pushing some soil around.

“Is it something that I can address in front of Thomas?”

“Of course.” He answered, without missing a beat.

“Good.”

And then she was gone.

His own words echoed for a while. _Even legends die_. It felt good to say it like that.

 

_**(x.)** _

 

[ _some stories are never written, not in the sand, not in the books, not in a language we understand_. _Thomas smiles at that, and they kiss, and -_ ]

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm orientinme on tumblr :)


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